Why did Athena blame Hippolyte for Heracles’ betrayal?

[u/Lich-hull]

I feel this was extremely unfair to the Amazon’s Hippolyte wanted to believe in the best of Heracles and she got drugged and beaten into submission because of his betrayal. Feels like victim blaming the poor woman from Athena.

I only ask this cus I’m wondering if it’s ever brought up again? I feel it’s pretty messed up of Athena to be so cruel here.

Source: Gods And Mortals by George Perez

[u/Rogthgar]

The logic of gods is kinda like: "I actually made you invincible with this item, you have already shown it works... and you still somehow lost it and now you want more help?!"

[u/telepader]

I figured this might be an example of how the gods arent really infallible. Lowkey it seemed like the gods inspired Hippolyta to create Diana so she’d grow up just in time for them to send her to Man’s World.

[u/Feeling_Pin_9146]

Greek gods are assholes, even when they're trying to do good. That's the arc of Hermes in this run.

Also, Pérez probably wasn't thinking about this but, despite being a feminist icon nowadays, Athena is one of the most misogynistic gods in the greek pantheon. She almost always plays Zeus' favorite and  most of her positive traits are attributed to the fact that she was not born of a woman. Also see how she deals with Aracne and Medusa (but consider it's mostly roman POV).

[u/ProfessorWright → u/Feeling_Pin_9146]

Athena got some really good PR in media to the point where we've forgotten she's effectively a spoiled brat with too much power in a lot of myths.

Ironically Ares has the flipside of that where he's made much more villainous than he is in myth, I can think of very few myths where he's the bad guy.

[u/ProfessorWright]

Honestly, Perez's portrayal of the Hippolyta and Hercules story is generally just gross and is why I'd never recommend someone start with this run.

[u/marra_pereira]

That's not exactly the point she was making.

Forewarning: I think it's an unfair (and terribly aged) situation one way or the other, just want to clarify the gods weren't upset about the amazons being betrayed.

The gods created the amazons to spread "Gaea's way". That means a lot of things, and one of them is to always keep the moral high ground. When Athena tells Hippolyte (while she's chained) the amazons have failed it's not about them having been defeated by Heracles, but because the amazons should have been leading mankind and instead grew apart of them (we don't really see this, so it's easy to miss due to the TONS of text in a single page, it's more told than it is shown).

Hippolyte begs her for the chance of revenge and Athena tells her NOT to do that. She frees Hippolyte instructing her to deal with the situation while remaining in "Gaea's way", which would probably be subdoing the men and leaving with the least ammount of bloodshed.

In the next page (again, A TON of stuff happens in a single page lol) narration tells us Hippolyte frees her sisters and tells them to remain in Gaea's way, but that the amazons do not listen because they are filled with raged and so they kill men before leaving (which Athena said very clearly wasn't the way), including a sister (Antiope, if I'm not mistaken) who kills with pleasure in her eyes.

THAT is the failure that leads the gods to isolating the amazons. The bracelets are to be a reminder of what was done to them, yes (which is pretty mean imo) and also of how they failed in responding the ""right way"".

Again, just to be clear, I don't really condone most of this reasoning and I do feel Hippolyte and Heracles storyline made some very unhealthy standarts for "forgiveness", just wanted to elaborate that they weren't punished for being defeated per say.

[u/Lich-hull → u/marra_pereira]

I appreciate the clarification, it has aged pretty poorly but I am really enjoying the run otherwise

[u/marra_pereira → u/Lich-hull]

Yeaaah, I still love the run, but the whole thing with Heracles was REEEEALLY messy

[u/Lich-hull → u/marra_pereira]

I think it’s okay writing for the time but has aged poorly, I’m still impressed with the writing otherwise